May 25, 2009: A Little of This, A Little of That

Those who have been reading my blog for a while know my neighbor, Pat. For new readers, I'll fill you in a bit. Pat and I have lived next door to each other for over 20 years. She's nine years my senior, at 80 years of age, but has always led an active life of golfing and fishing. Her husband passed away last year, and Pat continues to live in her big house, with the big yard, all alone. Well, alone except for her new puppy, Bandit. Bandit is half Chihuahua and half Dachshund.......a Chiweenie.

Two weeks ago, Pat had to have arthroscopic knee surgery, and a few days later she ended up in the hospital with pneumonia. Now her pneumonia is gone, but she's still having a lot of problems walking.

Pat's never been a vegetable gardener, but she loves the fresh vegetables I share with her, so when I ended up with more tomatoes than I had room for this year, she had her grandson bring in a pickup load of compost, and make a nice fertile strip along our shared fence for a few of my extra plants. She also hinted that she'd kind of like some green beans and zucchini there, too. I planted six of my tomato seedlings there last week, and today I added two rows of Royal Burgundy bush beans and two hills of Black Beauty zucchini.

Pat's new garden, with bush beans in the foreground, determinate tomatoes in the center, and zucchini at the back.

Her six tomatoes are 2 Homestead, 2 Marglobe, 1 Persey and 1 Market Miracle.

My side of the fence is filling in well.

Today I moved the garden bench and a small table to the corner of the garden. Once it gets hot, it will be shaded by the pole beans and cucumbers, a cool place to sit and drink my morning coffee.

The flower garden (along the fence on the left) is finally beginning to show some growth with the past two warmer days. The lilies are almost ready to bloom, one bud is showing color. The pot on the concrete blocks has a Minigold tomato, with a few bush beans at its base. It's on the blocks, as the butternut squash in the bed behind it will soon cover the entire area with its large leaves.

Look, Toni! Here are three of your pink hollyhocks in the back, and two white ones in the front. There is another group planting at the back of my east garden.

The west garden has pots of dwarf varieties of tomatoes on the irrigation water cover, Ottawa cranberry beans against the fence, a Market Miracle tomato in the green bucket, and the ? Dwarf Champion or Husky Red Cherry ? tomato in the white pot. That's the only tomato that I forgot to mark, so I'll have to wait for it to fruit before I can identify it. I haven't yet decided if I'll plant flowers in front of the white pot, or transplant some basil to that spot. I have quite a few Four O'clocks, in soil blocks, that have just sprouted. They might look pretty there, or they may grow too tall. Decisions, decisions! I wish I'd started more marigolds.

The other half of the west garden is devoted to two hills of zucchini. These are Black Beauty, and the other (not shown) hill is Grey zucchini. Only one of the Grey survived transplanting, and it's not looking so good. I put a couple more seeds in its hill today.

Otto and Annie really enjoyed today's warm weather and occasional sunshine.

Leona is growing! She's eight inches tall now, nearly 4" taller than she was when we got her!

Leona on 5/14 and 5/24. She goes out in the garden for her sunshine each day, but still comes in at night. We're still having night temperatures in the 40s, which is absolutely unheard of here in the Columbia Basin!

If you only have one cosmos, is it a cosmo?

It must be spring, the roses are blooming. They smell so sweet, like raspberries.

Oops! I almost forgot to show you my thyme! It's a beauty this year, measuring over a yard in width and 18" high.